“They are all my children”
Raised by a widowed mother who was on a mission to care for abandoned children, Neibanuo Angami carries on her mother’s calling to run their orphanage in Kohima, Nagaland. From begging for food as a child to letting her mother sell her only gold chain, Angami helped her mother nurture the children. Here Neibanuo Angami talks about her journey in her own words.
I still remember those days when I went from door-to-door begging for food and money for the children in our orphanage. I was just 10 years old. I trudged for miles to remote places, dragging my weary feet.
My body ached, but I endured the pain to fulfil my mother’s dream. As her only child, I felt it was my responsibility to provide food and shelter to every destitute child she wanted to help.
I don’t remember my father – he passed away when I was young. My mother was a nurse and we lived in utter poverty. But that didn’t deter her from serving those who had nobody in this world to call their own.
It all started when a young woman died during childbirth and the family abandoned the newborn. My mother brought the baby home. Soon other orphaned and destitute children came to our house – one after the other. I was just a child when my mother started the Kohima Orphanage and Destitute Home in 1973.
We didn’t have money to feed the children. One day she came to me holding my gold chain in her hand, seeking permission to sell it so that she could arrange food for the children. I agreed immediately. I even weaved blazers for the children, so that we didn’t spend money buying them.
We have struggled a lot in our journey. We were forced to shift three times, because people thought an orphanage would ruin the feel of their neighbourhood.
But our determination and belief in the Almighty helped us go on.
It’s been nearly a decade since my mother, Zaputuo Angami, left this world. Since then I have been fulfilling her dream of offering food, shelter and education to children in need. I even started a government-approved adoption program for the newborns.
We have 93 children from India and Burma right now. We educate them till class VIII in a government school and then send them to other institutions that charge low or no fees at all.
We believe in the children’s all-round development. So we train them in sports and music, which the well-known musician A.R. Rahman sponsors.
It’s a matter of pride that our children go on to serve in the army and get well-paid jobs. And, yes, I was touched when the Indian government honoured me as one of India’s 100 women achievers in 2016.
Though I’m not their biological mother, I see them as my children.
I want to work for my children till my last breath. I cannot express in words the overflowing happiness I feel when I see them smile, playing and enjoying themselves. After all, they are children with only one childhood.
Reporting by Gurvinder Singh, a freelance journalist based in Kolkata.